LETTER: Could Ballpark Hinder Shockoe Development?

There is a long-term problem with baseball in a bowl in Shockoe Bottom that no one has yet considered, and that is what do you do with the stadium 30 years from now when it is functionally obsolete? After all, The Diamond is only 28 years old and the plan is to demolish it.

The difference is that the proposed stadium will be sunken, and it will be surrounded by a hotel, 700 apartments, retail, a slave museum and a parking deck. Even if the city wants to demolish the stadium in the future it would be far more costly, with the surrounding development in place, and any subsequent development would be extremely difficult as well as expensive.

One way for the City Council to look at this development is to determine if it is viable without a stadium. If the marketplace can absorb the additional apartments, a hotel, the slave museum and retail, along with the proposed tourist information center, and the reworking of the farmers market, why not alter the plan, and lower the long term economic risk?